Predator and Prey
by aragonite
Summary: Patrick Troughton's Birthday tribute, using one of his all-time favorite monsters-the Androgums! Be warned. If you know what Androgums are you know what you are getting into! Too bad the Androgums only THINK they know what they're dealing with when they invite the Hyper Hobo of Hyperspace over for dinner...
1. Chapter 1

**Predator and Prey**

Summary: Tribute to Patrick Troughton, who has a birthday on March 25th. The Androgums were one of his favorite monsters.

This will read as much as possible the feeling of the old series. I tried to imagine Frazer Hines' voice, narrating as I wrote.

* * *

**Part 1:**

The _Feathered Sun_ was a standard Third Zone utilitarian, budgetized and efficient hyperspace-drive block of Metal in Space. Outside the Zone, neighbors and detractors shared in the combined criticism of the soulless architecture that went into the work, but the Zone ignored the scoffs. They made do with what they had…or they went without. Life to them was exactly that simple, and occasionally bitter.

_The Feathered Sun_ was a Robot Ship because the Zone had precious little surplus in the way of talented pilots and ship-captains; there had been a few too many wars, and far, far too many epic famines and loss of resources with the wearisome battering with the Dominators and other territorial giants. They owed money—and lots of it—to outside interests such as the Trated Collective, the Voraxx, the political vacuum-feeders stepping in to take the place of the War Lords, and others too shadowy and numerous to mention. They were strong enough to hold their own against the Cybermen (who currently had no interest in the region), but they would never hold up to Daleks…yet.

Most Zoners capable of flying were still training the next generation up in flight schools, or they lived shattered, retired, and wired up to cyborg augmentations. The expense of living, flawed beings at the helm was too much so Control Deck was converted into a supercooled Control Room.

_The Feathered Sun_ was injured.

Ordinarily capable of high performance on its supply runs across Mutter's Spiral, _the Feathered Sun_ had been sticking to its usual flight program through the Kirkwood Gap of the Minyos System. This was a commonplace flight path; since the awful business between Gallifrey and Minyos, the latter's planet had been politely left abandoned; a long-dead char of radioactive waste as a cautionary monument against Time Lord Altruism that encouraged too much technological growth, too fast, among non-Gallifreyans.

Young in her success with time travel, Gallifrey had been confident and drunk on the power of her new abilities, and arrogant from successes in the Great Vampire War. Minyans paid the price for being Gallifrey's friend: they drove out the Time Lords and burnt themselves up in nuclear fires for which they had been unprepared.

Minyos now spins alone in space, a tomb of a planet known for its amazing beauty under the telescopes of sentient beings, for her surface reflects all known spectrum of light.

She is beautiful because the nuclear bombs rendered her crust into reflective glass and her seas a permanent vapour of poison cloud.

Her planet had no visitors; there was no reason to use the planet but the empty space where thousands of ships had once sailed was still useful as a shortcut between the Charbydian and Basilian/Trician systems.

It was to employ this space as such a shortcut that an uncalculated maneuver into the ship's programmed flight plans erupted into emergency: a pulse of gravity from the dead Minyos had co-incided with the gravity pull off a passing planetestimal that _ordinarily_ would have an easily compensated-for differential.

If it hadn't been for the excess mass tacked on to the planetestimal because it had just been struck by a passing pinhole.

A pinhole that wasn't supposed to exist.

_The Feathered Sun_ shuddered under a chain of impacts as fragments of dirty rock and radioactive ice punched through layer after layer of safety shields. A fateful impact struck the language-relay between the ship's brain and the Hyperdrive Data input, creating a two-second time-lapse between MESSAGE SENT and MESSAGE RECIVED. She stumbled off-course for less than two seconds, but two seconds in space is enough for thirty lifetimes; before the course's corrected calculations could translate to the Hyperdrive, the craft entered a slow spin out of her original plan and tipped into the outermost gravity tides that would pull them further into the system.

The _Sun's_ hyperdrive was a workhorse, capable of continuing without complaint. It was not capable of dancing.

The spin grew worse as the intercommunications systems onboard flew into a storm of terror. Emergency lights shut off, the compu-nervous systems attempting to conserve power and re-correct the course before all life on board could be erased.

The crew of the _Sun_ knew it was hopeless, but they also knew life was never a guarantee anyway; they hastened to their pre-assigned posts and manually overrode electrical safeties and locks. The effect was instantaneous: Storage holds devoid of life were instantly turned off; their power and atmosphere was siphoned into the living portions of the decks. Trained crewmen in pressure suits dove into the claustrophobic spaces between the skin of the hull and the outermost rooms, using brute muscles to lock down chamber after chamber. Like most cargo ships, _the Sun_ had her most expendable cargo in the rooms closest to vacuum: at the slightest breach the less-profitable cargo would spill out. It also had the added advantage of distracting any potential attacking pirates who might be the cause of the hull breach.

_The Sun's_ extraneous power reserves fluttered once, as another pulse racketed through the craft's skeleton. The Control Room appeared to gasp onscreen, as normal atmosphere began to leak through the weakening seals.

* * *

Amidst the flurry, a second ship slipped through the ancient warzone, heading straight for the foundering _Sun_ as it death-throed its way to an agonizing meltdown against the surface of the still-radioactive Minyos. It was so much smaller than _the Feathered Sun_ it was ridiculous; a tiny terrier trying to save a drowning ox. Under most scanners it barely showed at all. It was a deep blue, box-shaped, with a strange glowing light on its top with even stranger-looking alien letters writ across its front. It glowed under the long-wave scanners that employed some of the more obscure radiation-patterns.

At close range the tiny ship spun, dipped, and wheeled with a peculiar if inexplicable grace through a deadly arcade of orbiting mass in the Kirkwood Gap. Anyone witnessing this ethereal dance would be hard-pressed to decide if the ship was driven by a madman, a fool, a genius, a maestro musician or all of the above; some of the maneuvers went against the grain of common sense—or perhaps transcended ordinary dull arithmetic. She seemed to _anticipate_ impacts before they came—twice in the blizzard of rock and metal and space-junk she vanished altogether only to appear on the other side of her attacking object. And with the briefest pause, which could be a dancer stopping only to draw in a fresh breath, she was off, spinning again in her most dangerous game.

Like _the Feathered Sun_ she was trapped in an Event that must play out to the end—be it freedom or the freedom of death.

Unlike _the Feathered Sun,_ this craft was alive. So was her pilot.

**Boom**. A chunk of iron magnetite struck the side of the toy-craft and went spinning off, doubtless causing its own problems with navigation for future travelers.

If audial scanners worked anything like the visuals, they would have picked up startling scraps and fragments of some sort of screaming match going on whilst the craft playing footloose in the arena of space.

_["I told you I saw it with my own eyes!"]_

_["The TSD is more reliable than that, Doctor."]_

_["I don't care what those unintelligent computers said! Dull, soulless, unimaginative things with no appreciation for possibility! It's clearly—"] _

!BOOM!

* * *

The TARDIS rocked like a wet-navy ship; the Doctor clutched frantically at his control console even as he silently cursed at the stupid technicians who had repaired his precious ship according to their specifications—most especially, along the proportions to someone who was much larger than himself.

Gallifreyans had been smaller in the old days; Giants like Omega and Rassilon almost revered for their god-like proportions. The ancient craft had appealed to the Doctor in part because he felt perfectly sized within her walls. And now what? They'd done her up into something more modern and less…cozy. And unless his ear had failed him (which it never did) his poor TARDIS was just as unhappy about the change as he. Together they were struggling to re-integrate the new and unfamiliar into the old and comfortable, desperate to repair the old bond between ship and pilot.

!BOOM!

The thinning leather soles of his scruffed shoes slipped on the gleaming floor. A gout of sparking wires tumbled out of the ceiling and draped over his small body like so many Christmas garlands.

Long used to the problems of flying a ship older than some of Gallifrey's tectonic plates, the little man blew a ghost wire away from his face and shook his tousled mop of just-greying hair, hoping to clear it of cables. Eyes as electric as the wires glittered green and frantic as they narrowed, concentrating on his craft's needs. As usual, the telepathic circuits protested; no modern patch job had ever worked with her and she was trying her best to communicate with him. The Doctor (stubborn and resolute creative thinker that he was), answered the courtesy by trying to adapt his mind to her Temporal Grace.

_["Doctor! Get out of there before it's too late!"]_

The only other presence in the room was that of the scanner directly facing him on the opposite wall. It wore a tight-faced visage of a sallow, lean man with grey hair, grey eyes and dull grey robes.

["Your TARDIS cannot continue on this flight, Doctor!"] The face was insisting.

"Only a little longer!" The Doctor protested, his voice pitching high from the stress of the moment. "I'm almost there and I almost had a fix on the coordinates!"

["Doctor, may I remind you—"]

BOOM.

The Doctor yelped, his arm flying forward into space just in time to grip the Rotor. His feet left the floor and the roundels went dull. With a face white with tension and fear he faced the angry one on the other side of the screen.

["That your—"]

CRUNK.

[-Derelict of a TARDIS—"]

*BOOM.*

_["For the love of Rassilon! Will you just switch to Automatic before you knock yourself into next week?!"]_

Grim as the situation was, the Doctor had to grin tightly at the unexpected break in the other's countenance.

"Next week?" He panted even as he struggled to hang on to a control he was also trying to dial down. "When did you start picking up Earth phrases, Sardon?"

_["I'm not picking up Tellurian phrases, Doctor! I'm being literal! The wave-momentum is going to send you a full month into the future if you make even the slightest miscalculation!"]_ The Time Lord's composure finally cracked and gave up any chance of poise. [_"Doctor, you can't manually pilot a TARDIS through an active orbit! You'd have to be a genius!"]_

"Tch." The Doctor answered in that calm, just-slightly-smug way that infuriated everyone on Gallifrey—especially the ones who had scored his academic grades to such abysmal levels. "And what was your point? I'm afraid I missed it."

["If you don't stop this at once and head right back to Xenobia, I will _personally_ activate your Last Resort Bomb!"]

"Not if you want this pinhole." The Doctor snapped back. "And it needs to be traced, Sardon. Not if we want to risk further lives and further mischief in the Continuum." A wire snaked lazily across his nose; he risked freeing one hand long enough to brush it away.

Behind Sardon, the tiny images in the background froze, temporarily stunned at the way their newest recruit was speaking to his superior officer.

Sardon was ever a man of iron control and was not going to name his first temper tantrum after the Doctor.

"You are putting yourself under undue risk, Doctor." He opted to use his Condescending, I am in Control voice. That voice reminded the Doctor that his life was securely in the hands of the CIA—and Sardon's more than anyone else. "Piloting in your head is not a recommended activity."

"Then please don't distract me!" The Doctor retorted. "I _tried_ the Automatic program, Sardon! Don't you think I know that much about my own TARDIS? This pinhole detected me whenever I got within a single parsec! _It's charged full of artron! I've no choice but to go in blind!"_

**BOOM**.

* * *

Back on Xenobia, the CIA was staring at the remnants of images filtering back from space and time. The Doctor had (wisely) turned off the sound and was now keying a maneuver into the console that looked more like a game of The Mad God's Chess.

"'know that much about my own TARDIS?'" Arcalian Het'laup repeated blankly. "I don't think _anyone_ knows anything about _that_ TARDIS!"

"From your mouth to the Ears of the Mad God." His companion sighed. "You know, I don't remember him being quite like this back at the Academy."

"He was still being good. Er, trying to be good. He was never that good at it."

"I hate that I know what you mean."

A very quiet, calm, pent-up exhalation of resignation distracted the Council. Everyone glanced uneasily to Sardon, who was sitting quite still at his portion of the table, long, lean fingers laced neatly over the polished fossilwood. Despite the pyroclastic temper of his recent words, the Grey Man, whom even the Traditionalists thought "strange," was composed and remote.

"Shouldn't we at least activate the Recall?" The Advocate for the Chair proposed timidly.

"No." Sardon said firmly. "The Doctor is right." He ignored the askance expressions breezing across the room like so many leaves, and poured himself a glass of water. "The data backs up what he is saying. That pinhole is…impossible as it sounds…temporally aware of our attempts to track it; he has no choice but to trace it by manual flight."

In the flurry of shocked protests, the Arcalian Voice of Reason floated above the chaos:

"Sardon, no one's attempted to fly any timeship on manual since the Dark Days! We've lost that…that primitive skill thousands of years ago!"

"Well he's _flying_ a ship from the Dark Days, so that gives him as much help as he'll ever get!" Sardon sipped his water with appropriate dignity and calm, but his compatriots were careful to ignore the muscle trying to jump in his cheek. "And if anyone can fly at TARDIS with nothing more than the calculations in his head, it would be that Rumpled Rouge."

"Sardon, have you _seen_ his grades?" Jokul's eyebrows had lifted to the highest point on his high forehead. "He flunked Basic Square-free Algorithms! He got higher marks for turning the perigosto stick into a musical instrument!"

"Yes, I have seen his grades. I also noticed his low grades were in direct correspondence to classes taught by Prydonian Elders who'd had the delight of his father." Sardon had found a nutricube and with frozen dignity popped it in his mouth, washing it down with more water. As usual, even the least incidental reference to the two Time Lords that had given life to The Doctor lifted chills up his flesh. He took a deep breath. "At any rate, if we are to track this dangerous anomaly, we will have to use new methods—the other ones weren't working at all."

"But…If you agreed with him, why didn't you just say so?"

"When controlling a free thinker like the Doctor, the best thing you can do is make certain he never knows you approve of his actions." Sardon said firmly.

"What's he doing now?"

Sardon glanced at the screen. Through the Continuum-warped imagery they could just make out a blurred shape: the small, battered figure of the Doctor pressing his ear against the console of his embarrassingly out of date TARDIS, his lips moving as if in paying reverence to unseen forces. "Listening." He said helpfully. "One of his odd little tricks, or proof of his madness, I've never been sure which."

"Is he talking to that thing?" Someone asked uneasily

"Believe me, that's not the worst thing I've seen him talk to." Sardon paused, thinking.

"What do we do now?"

"We wait." Sardon said firmly. "The Doctor has chosen the moral high ground—an altruistic direction that will, if he survives, condemn him to further punishment and parole term with us. If he dies in the line of duty, that is his choice. If he survives, he will return to us, and we will re-write the specific terms of his terms of service. But either way…"

The Grey Man's voice faltered only briefly. He was never indecisive, just calculating.

"Either way we must watch and take what we see into personal account."

There. He'd said it.

Outwardly he was the epitome of calm, proper Time Lordian detachment.

Inwardly he was wondering if he'd pushed too far.

* * *

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor was not bothering with the ridiculousness that passed for decision-making amongst the CIA. He had other things to worry about—getting through the field of active plantestimals for one, and keeping his bead on that infuriating little pinhole while he did so! Being the hired gun of the Time Lord Secret Police actually paled in comparison to the troubles of chasing after that horrid little mathom.

Especially considering this nasty little beast had been the object of his chase across this side of the Galaxy for at least three gigaanuums!

Pinholes were every bit as bad as wormholes…but they were much, much smaller.

The Doctor flinched as his Timeship pitched forward, yawed like Lord Nelson's ship under storm, and finally went right. When it finished its navigational gyrations, he was trembling and gasping for breath. His hands had frozen to the console in a grip an Ice Warrior would have saluted. When he managed to unlock them from the second and fourth panels, he looked hard for a moment to see if he'd dented the metal.

Steering his TARDIS through bad space was problematic in the best of times; he missed Jamie and Zoe acutely. Zoe could have manned the Environmental Controls whilst Jamie had proven adaptable to Panel Six's power units and shunting tricks. But no, no Companions yet. That was a privilege he had yet to earn, as they loved to remind him over and over and over.

He suspected that his Minders were doing it on purpose, to make sure his loneliness in isolation would make him more agreeable to accepting atrociously dangerous jobs—like this one, for example.

So he was literally flying solo with one hand on the second panel (Extreme Navigational Circumstance and Defensive Maneuvers) and the fourth (Computer Access and Databanks).

BOOM!

"Oh, bother." He muttered and tucked his head into his shoulders just before a waterfall of couplings tumbled over his body like so much clastic fill into a sinkhole. Wires trickled down his back. He had the faint impression this would look utterly absurd if it wasn't so terrifying—modern TARDIS models had killed more than one hapless pilot in similar accidents, State of Grace unable to compensate for a TARDIS' own mishaps.

He grimly plugged on, banishing from his head the unpleasant memories of old school training films showing the end result of foolish young pilots: very dead pilots, gift-wrapped like so many mummies by their own equipment. His Girl wasn't like that. He knew it; and he really and truly hoped she wasn't picking up his thoughts right now because she wasn't above a bit of a—

**SSSSSSSSCCCRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE**

Tears filled the Doctor's eyes. His protective lenses shut down all the way, but he didn't need to see so much anyway. Even stone blind he knew every inch of her.

"There you are!" He crowed, and slapped his hand down on one of the less-used controls. "Got you now, you little—"

* * *

Even on the other side of the Five Galaxies, the CIA council heard what happened next:

The explosion of over-stressed temporal flares hit Xenobia's sensors like a firestorm across a dry steppe under high winds. It blew out half the screens, drained the power off the Station's Solar Sails, clogged the Fugit Relays which sent the feeding lines to the Eye of Harmony on the fritz, and made firecrackers out of the Transduction Barriers. Even the Dominators picked up the pyrotechnic display from their side of the Universe, and the TSS departments all over Gallifreyan Territory would be scrubbing white noise out of the input plugs for weeks. It would have been a splendid time for the Daleks to stage an intelligence coup; if their sensors hadn't suffered the same damages. As it were, Skaro's mutations assessed the situation in their unnerving blackout, and made the correct decision to blame it on the next version of the Doctor they encountered.

* * *

Sardon sat, wondering if he'd been accidentally temporally frozen to his chair in the wake of the hot, reeking wind of exploded scanner on the wall. His ears rang like the Holy History Bells on Founding Father's Feast Day.

Then the rest of his hearing recovered; most of his mates were either gasping in shock or failing to hold on to their concept of 'dignified hysterics.'

Someone tugged on his sleeve. Again.

"Yes?" Sardon croaked, couldn't hear himself, and tried again. "Yes?"

"Sir!" A fresh-faced Technician with wide blue eyes was shaking. "We've got a problem!"

"We've got several problems, I believe." Sardon struggled to keep from yelling, but his ears were still adjusting to his personal volume. He cleared his throat. "What is it?"

"The Doctor…" The trembling youth wiped his sweating face. "Sent us a message cube."

"He did?" Sardon couldn't have kept the shock out of his voice if he'd tried. "He's alive?"

"I-I-I don't know about that, sir. It's the message cube he sent that's the trouble." The boy gulped hard, finally aware that everyone had piped down to stare at him. "The Cube, sir! It showed up in the docking bay. There's…" Another gulp. "The scanners say there's a pinhole inside it! We've got all our shields up around it…

"_But we don't know what to do!"_ The tech wailed. _"No one's ever mailed us a pinhole before!"_

"Be calm, boy." A chilly voice soothed the frantic youngster. It was Goth, who rarely spoke at meetings unless he had something obscure to say. The lean Prydonian was brushing bits of disaster off his fine Coquelicot robes with cool disdain. "Transmat the Cube directly to one of those Pocket Dimensions we keep on standby for emergencies, and keep the containing shields around it. If it's as volatile as we fear, it will require extreme containment methods. Our scientists can take the problem from there."

"Sir! Yes!"

The still-dazed Interventionists watched him go.

"Still alive." Jokul muttered blankly.

Sardon was impressed himself, but kept the situation relative. "At least he was when he mailed us our little culprit."

"Now all we have to do is find him." Goth was stroking his cheek thoughtfully. "Locking a rouge pinhole into a message cube? Unexpected but a stroke of genius."

Sardon would never dream to get into a battle of social graces with a Pryodonion, but the temptation to make a clever but sarcastic comment about working with the Doctor was exceptionally strong today.

* * *

To be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

_**Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.**_

_**-**__**Erich Fromm**_

* * *

The pinhole had already proven itself at least temporally aware by moving away from any detections coming off the TARDIS' automatic scans. Indeed, the entire reason for sending the Doctor in his battered-up old thing was because within the numerous failed attempts someone had noticed the older the TARDIS, the closer they could get to the dangerous little beast.

There was only one Type-40 TT model left in the Universe (parallel universes not being a topic for safe conversation, much less digestion), and luckily for the CIA, it was under their command. Even more luckily, the thing had a pilot that was actually willing to steer it.

And luckiest of all: it being under their authority, they had wiped it out of the Gallifreyan Register long ago. Technically it didn't exist at all, so if the unfortunate pilot died en mission, it was one death they didn't have to deal with.

* * *

"We're sending a dangerous little rouge after a dangerous little rouge," Sardon had mused with full conscious irony of the situation. He wasn't making a joke at all. He just had a finely evolved sense of reality.

"That thing has destroyed thirty of our TTs with the corresponding loss of life!" The current Chair protested for what was the shakiest argumentative grounds in the CIA: Morality. "Three were fully staffed and manned scoutships! Are you saying we can just order a person to take a solo mission that is sheer suicide?"

Sardon answered by toggling a button at his chair. The large screen on the wall instantly responded: the unmistakable luxury of a Gallifreyan Oubliette.

Oubliettes were often where the condemned lived out their natural lives, waiting for the closure of sentence…or, being Time Lords, they were often forgotten. To salve any inconvenient guilt, the government had created impervious cells equipped with every imaginable indulgence of food, drink, libraries, music and even spas.

This oubliette had stopped looking like a typical oubliette some months ago. Its current prisoner was easily bored and despite housing the body of a man in his middle years, was regretfully hyperactive.

Jokul nearly swallowed his drink the wrong way. "What is that?" He sputtered at the thing that now dominated much of the expansive sitting room.

Sardon lifted an eyebrow, taking the question literally. "I think it's some sort of fort." He mused. "Now how did he get all of the tables stacked up like that?"

"Sardon…"

"Those look like Prydonion curtains…"

"Sardon, we aren't supposed to use madmen."

"He's not mad, my learned colleagues. He simply…doesn't fit in the mold."

In the sudden drop in silence, Sardon cleared his throat and activated the speaker. "Doctor?"

There was a pause and (to Sardon's secret disappointment, the familiar scruffy little renegade did not emerge from inside the giant architecture of stacked table, chair, and draped curtains, but from behind the back of the enormous monolith). He was holding a tiny lacquered end-table in his hands and a large spool of what looked like red mantis-silk cord draped over his shoulders.

"Can't it wait, Sardon?" The Doctor's voice was overflowing with innocence. "I'm almost finished with the top-piece."

"And what do you call it, Doctor?" Sardon leaned his chin in his hand as he struggled to find some clues. "A fortress of solitude? Den of Iniquity?"

"It started out as a model of Mt. Lung." The Doctor admitted with that unnerving meek and shy demeanor he liked to use when someone was about to muscle him. Sardon once saw a Dalek flee from the Doctor when he used that voice, fast as his little static roundels could carry him. "But I couldn't get the proportions correct without knocking a hole in the ceiling."

"I'm so glad you didn't try knocking holes into anything—"Sardon noted too late a flicker of an "Oh, Rassilon" expression and decided to take a look at those rooms later. "In the meantime if you're suitably attired—"Sardon ignored the incredulous expressions across the table. "—your presence is required."

"Suitable?" The Doctor glanced down at himself, frowning in puzzlement. "And right now? I've still got to put up the Crow's Nest!"

Sardon managed not to ask what a Crow's Nest was, and forget ask why he was putting it on a model of Mount Lung—no, wait, he'd said it had _begun_ as a model—that left a third example of restraint as he managed not to ask what the lump of furniture-sculpture was supposed to be now if it wasn't thirty feet of interpretive Art…

He struggled to pull his mind back to Gallifrey. "Come and join us, if you would please."

"Oh, wonderful!" Beaming, the Doctor put down the table and clasped his hands together. "Quite a party, I see. Are there appetisers? Should I bring the coffee-pot?"

"Sardon, this is absurd!" High Legal Advocate Norlan blurted. "We are not sending this scape-wit into the Minyan Belt!"

Sardon was already opening his mouth to deflect the situation, but it was too late.

"Minyan Belt? I take it you're finally doing something about that rouge pinhole gadding about Mutter's Spiral!"

Norlan croaked. "Who told you we were sending you there?"

"You just did." The Doctor said blandly, but Sardon could just make out the twinkle of a little Mountain-devil in the green eyes hiding under his thick fringe of black hair.

Sardon sighed. His head was starting to hurt. "Meeting first, Doctor. The guards are cleared for your escort."

* * *

If meddling wouldn't be his undoing, curiosity would do the job. The Doctor arrived promptly and took the first available chair, throwing his small body back and steepling his fingers together with all the poise of a bored maestro.

"So. What have I missed?" He smiled impishly.

"You're spying on us!" Norlan had been simmering in rage from the brief space between the Doctor's checkout and his T-matting to the Station. As soon as the originator of his indignity arrived, the simmer boiled over and promptly made a mess. "You can't sit here and tell me you haven't! We only just agreed to this mission and you've been in the Oubliette all this time!"

"Oh, dear. You've found me out. How rude of me." The Doctor drawled. His little fingers danced against each other in time to his words.

Sardon often studied the Doctor's hands. They reminded him more than anything else of how deadly the man was: despite the decrepitude of his appearance, his hands were the truest expression of his inner being: small, perfectly proportioned, and frighteningly gifted, they were scrupulously neat and clean and capable of terrifying precision.

The Doctor was capable of amazing acts of misdirection with his seemingly shabby and foolish appearance, but his hands were the one thing he could not disguise. If more opponents only noticed this little incongruity…they would doubtless live longer.

"I assure you he isn't spying on anyone, Comrade." Sardon said wearily. "The Doctor is simply plagued with curiosity and boredom in his confinement and has been studying the news. The missing Scouts have been on the newsfeeds for the past three months."

"Actually, for the past terasecond." The Doctor corrected in his unassumingly gentle voice. "If you factor in the totality of all the people missing under the same suspicious circumstances in Mutter's Spiral, it all follows a pattern sometime around the first approved emergence of Homo Sapiens." He tipped his head back, letting his too-long hair flop untidily down the back of his neck. "And we're not talking about the 'thirty-so' Gallifreyans missing; I numbered it up in the thousands with an average of one life missing per every twelve kiloseconds."

Sardon was able to keep up with the Doctor (he'd learned the risks of not going along with the little man long ago). "I'm surprised you didn't request a chance to investigate this anomaly."

"I did."

Goth breathed out, his fingers also in that very Prydonian gesture. "And have you any conclusions from your research?" He asked neutrally.

The Doctor's eyes flickered from a light, dancing blue to dark green. Lungbarrow Eyes. Goth and the Doctor were forever civil, but their dislike was as coolly formal as a genteel dissection. "This can't be an ordinary pinhole." He said at last, after the silence drew out. "It's behaving more like a compressed wormhole, and like a wormhole, its presence is affecting Relativity."

Sardon had the chilly certainty that the Doctor knew more than he was telling, but he never speculated unless in pretense; he was horribly aware of his facts when he gave them.

"Nevertheless, we need to get closer to this threat if we are to understand how we are to negate it as a threat." Sardon stared at the other, nodding faces around the room.

"If word gets out about this…if people start noticing…" The Arcalian was fidgeting at the thought and started pacing back and forth. The Doctor watched him almost idly, through half-closed eyes in an expression of patient laziness. Sardon certainly knew better than to trust that look. "We should go back over the news reports, make certain our citizens cannot come to their own conclusions. There would be a cloud of hysteria if they learned we had a rouge force of nature dashing at random throughout the Universe, causing death and destruction without prediction or limit!"

The Doctor snorted.

The room temperature dropped to a point that might have been balmy in the Death Zone. Sardon had been blessed with the perfect angle of the room and decided that the Doctor's rudeness was not politically apt, but it did save Goth the trouble of crushing an enemy Chapter.

"First of all," the little man said with a sharp glare, "I did not read the news reports to come across this information. So your hidebound dreams of strangling the already filtered, sanitized and homogenized news for Gallifrey won't wash, I'm afraid." His eyes fully open now, he leaned forward, fixing the Arcalian with the intensity of his gaze beneath the curtain of sloppy hair.

"Then how did you learn about this pinhole, Doctor?" Sardon placed himself into the interrogation all the better to distract Narol from making a fool of the proceedings.

"I looked at the start charts." The Doctor answered blandly. "That's something even the CIA can't change—our people have been painting images of the night sky since before we discovered taranium!" He sniffed, and sounded much like his older personality just then. "Anyone with a basic education in astronomy can see what I saw and draw the same conclusions: This pinhole is affecting all of the Space/Time Continuum throughout thousands of different points through the Universe. It's probably affected the Parallel Dimensions and Pocket Universes as well but they're always harder to examine."

"How many charts did you read?" Jokul wondered.

"I don't recall counting _those_. Went over one map a day for two months for a bit…" He shrugged. "It began in a cislunar orbit from a point about 127.93 kilometers below the surface of Minyos. It only looks erratic because it jumps across the Temporal Continuum more than it does the Spatial portion." The pause at his interrogator was just ever so slightly challenging. "You do recall that the entire Universe is moving, don't you? Well, we have a moving bomb on one side, and a moving Universe on the other. They're moving in and out of each other's space like so many needles through knitting. Two different fabrics, sewing themselves into each other!"

"Its temporal awareness explains why it eludes our crafts." Sardon cut in before someone could be cut to pieces. "It eludes our most advanced technology but the older craft seem to be able to get closer—if only by a few parsecs—before it either escapes them or said craft get inadvertently too close and suffer the price."

"Which is the real reason why I'm here." The Doctor sighed. "I have the oldest TARDIS still functioning."

"It's your TARDIS we need, not you so much." Sardon said reluctantly.

That earned him his first smile of the day. It was disturbingly layered with a glitter of depth in those changeable Lungbarrow eyes. "Do you have anyone willing to pilot her?" He asked with that overflowing-with innocence look. "Wasn't she just taken off the syllabus some years back? How many people remember how to fly a Type 40 TT?"

"Precious little." Jokul piped up. His ridiculously handsome features scored the seriousness of the conversation with his "pallbearer's" expression. "The '40's were modeled directly on Rassilon's plan to seek out the enemy during the Vampire Wars. They are organic; flexible and require a level of creative thinking that is alas not encouraged in our schools at this time." He rose and went to the dispenser for his own glass of water. "Training a pilot isn't the problem. Finding someone willing to navigate a craft that may or may not agree with them? That's a separate order of mammal."

"Isn't that how you stole that one in the first place?" Narol asked with a sudden spasm of suspicion.

The Doctor tutted. "Stole, really. She was on her way to the scrapyard and everything of value had already been stripped. Just in case, I left a pandak-voucher at the 'yard on my way out." He smiled cheerfully. His smile broadened. "But essentially, you're asking how it was I managed to walk out of the yards with her unencumbered…" He shrugged. "Who bothers to lock up an old '40 when so few people can or will fly her?"

"Obviously, thieves." Sardon said dryly. "As well as anarchists, malcontents, insomniacs and civilians who have far, far too much information about the Decommission Yards."

Yes, the Doctor was definitely laughing on the other side of his elastic face. "Type 40's are designed to seek out trouble." He said gently as a snowflake falling upon an ice lake on a perfect day. "I promise you, we'll get to that pinhole closer than anyone else will."

"I doubt that not, Doctor…but will you survive it?" Sardon asked heavily.

Another shrug was his answer. "My term of service ends with the CIA when I die." He reminded the room with a placid calm. "It would be more interesting than building model galleons out of furniture."

Sardon kept himself from asking what a galleon was. His life didn't hinge on knowing, he reminded himself.

* * *

The Doctor was told to report to the Bay when he was ready.

Naturally, he was always ready.

That was the problem with working with Intergalactic Space Hoboes, Sardon knew. The wanderlust hit Gallifreyans rarely, but when it did…it was all but incurable. Sardon's own (questionable) family history had taught him the value of never underestimating that quality.

With the Doctor it was all about the frontier. If it wasn't space, it was time. When it was neither, it was a puzzle. And when it couldn't be a puzzle, it was something that had to be fixed. In controlling him, his controllers should never lose sight of these truths.

Sardon was always re-establishing the roles between Master and Servant, and this new problem required his adoption of a new role: He walked into the Doctor's Oubliette without warning, just as he had back in the days of their early "relationship" when he was a criminal condemned to outright death.

* * *

He found his most troublesome charge sitting in the middle of his (astonishingly clean) quarters, working on some sort of puzzle.

The Grey Man paused in the doorway, considering the sight before him. The little Hobo was still refusing to wear anything but the clothing of Earth, but it was anyone's guess why he did so. There was a reason for this, the CIA provocateur knew, but he had no idea what it was.

His small form was perched cross-legged in the centre of his living space, with a deck of strangely patterned rectangles of stiff paper spread before him in a semi-circle.

Sardon could tell with his Time Lord's glare that it was a mere 52-card deck—a toddler's grade of game, surely—but there was something about the layout and the way the Doctor was playing that suggested it was really a complex pattern.

The Doctor dealt a fresh hand before responding. "You're already prepared, Sardon. That's why you had me copied for the Matrix." The small hands spread the cards in a graceful arc. "What was the real story, hmn? An insurance for later?"

Sardon chose his words carefully. The Doctor could smell a lie. "Your medical reports."

"My what?" The Doctor blinked. Whatever he had expected, it was not this response.

Sardon moved deeper into the room and chose the comfortable guest chair. "The Temporal scanners were able to work backwards once you were in custody, Doctor. It was the point of the Trial to come to the fairest of all conclusions. Anyone who leaves Gallifrey without permission—especially under conditions like yours—must be evaluated for mental illness."

"Hah." The Doctor scoffed.

"Nothing overtly wrong with your faculties…" Sardon leaned back, adopting a conciliatory pose. "But there were some…questions about your original body."

Now the Doctor's gaze had turned gimlet with suspicion. Sardon half expected the old Doctor to step out of the skin of the new one, but of course that was impossible. The Doctor lacked the ability to change his face like he could his wardrobe.

"It's quite a list, actually. A frightening warning to those of us who would wander without the support of Gallifrey. We collected records of broken bones—I forget how many—contusions, illnesses that placed unnatural strain on your body…most renegades leave _after_ they acquire the usefulness of two hearts and multiple lungs, you know. But you didn't. Primitive dental care…and your entire system was shutting down bit by bit. There were pressures of age in your circulatory system, your nervous system, and alas that brain of yours you prize so highly. If the physicians were correct you must have been living in a constant cloud of pain for the last hundred years of that body's life." Sardon controlled his voice carefully, for the Doctor would not like to hear pity. "You were well within the boundaries for memory issues…occasional lapses of forgetfulness and confusion."

"Is there a point to this, Sardon?" The Doctor's voice was quiet and soft. His most dangerous voice and one he almost never used on his own people.

"When it comes to regeneration, Doctor, Oldbloods like you have the worst time. You're more likely to die for certain than successfully change over if you do it by yourself." As he spoke, Sardon wondered why in the world he was having this 90% socially taboo conversation.

Polite, "nice" Time Lords demonstrated their superior breeding by not mentioning regenerations in public at all. The fact that the two of them were having this conversation just enforced the fact that Sardon was not from a nice family, and the Doctor was permanently in the realm of "disreputable."

"That battered-up old TARDIS helped you through it. It may have even thrown in a few things it thought her pilot needed. Your telepathic abilities have been…evolved. You have a quantum prescience that picks up on the environmental energies and allows you to glimpse possibilities in Time just a jump ahead of your opponents. An old instinct, barely used in this modern day and age, but certainly useful for a fellow who spent most of his life one step ahead of the law. You're much healthier than you ever were in at least, oh, three hundred years or so.

"But I digress. The point I'm making is, you regenerated with barely any time to spare—fighting Cybermen, honestly!" He shook his head, exasperated.

"Earth stopped Mondas." The Doctor said in that voice of frozen calm. "That was enough."

"Because you had help."

"I don't think even the High Council's Secret Officers could have done it by themselves."

"Yes, that is true." Sardon examined his cuticles as he spoke. "It is also true that you could have contested one of the major points of indictment against you."

"Oh?"

"The abduction and kidnapping of various people—all of them non-Gallifreyans—into being your companions."

In the corners of his vision, he could see how the little man froze, in slow motion. His hands stilled over his work.

"And what of it?"

"Nothing…nothing…except you could have argued that you were a…less rational being back in that span, Doctor. One's first life is always so fraught with mistakes and heedless consequence. And yet you didn't defend yourself at all on this charge." Sardon let his voice drop. "One might think you were _protecting_ the lesser beings in question…that you were willing to shoulder an extra charge and punishment for their sakes. But that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? To think that you cared enough for them that you'd tack all these years of servitude upon yourself so that we Time Lords wouldn't step in and erase you from their memories…like we did your last two."

It did not please him to see his opponent had stilled at his words. The scruffy little figure had paused in the middle of his task and was not moving at all. Waiting, Sardon realized, to see what else would happen.

The unkempt, dark head lifted up, and the shaggy fringe hiding those small, clever eyes fell away.

Despite himself, Sardon shivered.

"What do you expect me to say, Sardon?" The voice was very quiet, calm.

Waiting.

"Nothing at all." Sardon held his gaze. "Except I will be leaving my post in a few years. There are several candidates for my replacement. Some I have no faith in; others precious little." His eyes sharpened. "You may be able to fool them, assuming you've lived to that point. But some of these fools…" He took a deep breath, seeking calm.

"I'm not telling you to be careful, Doctor. That would be pointless in so many ways. But I am telling you that your ethics, admirable as they are for their sincerity…are ripe for the use of less imaginative minds. Minds that are not paying attention to the actual goals of the TSS and the CIA.

"You won't let that stop you, I'm sure."

"Why are you telling me this, Sardon?" The Doctor asked suspiciously. "You don't have to warn me, and like you said, I won't play anyone's game but my own."

"What was it you said when I asked you why you returned after the Lady Serena's death?" Sardon's smile was paper thin with regret at the loss of that young life. "You mentioned integrity. We see very little of that here, Doctor."

"I also told you I was aware you had the TARDIS wired for destruction."

"Which you and I both know we would only use if desperate. Those things are atrociously expensive. No, Doctor, when _you_ play a game you have three or four motives behind every move. That way you can always pick the one that suits you—which is always to show yourself in the worst possible light-and say the truth without telling the whole truth.

"Your new keepers will not know this about you. They will not appreciate your differences except how it makes you a more valuable weapon. I don't claim to have integrity, Doctor. But I entered this shadowy world for a reason, and I do NOT intend to leave it knowing my years of work have disintegrated into nothing…nor will I allow this Agency to be worse than when I first joined."

The hard resolve in his voice surprised them both; speaking as equals was something neither of them did. They were largely comfortable in their roles: Sardon as the Master and the Doctor as the recalcitrant and immature student. But times were changing and they both knew it.

The CIA was forever working against the shadows…and many of the worst shadows were those inside the office.

The Doctor's mouth was a straight line. "Is that why you had me copied into the Matrix?" He asked quietly.

Sardon was shocked into swallowing. "I didn't know you knew that."

"Child's play, Sardon. Quite illegal, but when has that bothered the Interventionists?" The eyes were dark as Arcalian dye. "Am I to be your weapon after all? A tool of vengeance against your enemies? A tool you can resurrect from death again and again as the need may be?"

"I don't believe it will come to that, but that isn't the point." Sardon told him in a voice lacking in feeling. "I don't trust the future, Doctor. But I know that you are a large part of Gallifrey's. And there are powerful interests who are watching all of us. I will not be unprepared."

"No...no of course you won't." The Doctor answered in the same voice. And his hand reached down to rest over one of the Exile tattoos resting on teh flesh beneath his sleeve.

* * *

SSSSSSSSCCCRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Tears filled the Doctor's eyes. His protective lenses shut down all the way, but he didn't need to see so much anyway. Even stone blind he knew every inch of her.

"There you are!" He crowed, and slapped his hand down on one of the less-used controls. "Got you now, you little—"

* * *

Reality happened.

* * *

It threw the TARDIS into a spin echoing that of the much-larger craft. Together the ships fell, the smaller one pulled by micro-fine webs of gravity gained by the Feathered Sun's mass. To the Doctor's horror his new CIA Fault Locator shrieked and blew in a burst of mercury and ion.

The TARDIS was now in a war of mass between the cargo ship and herself.

"Oh, no," he murmured around the banshee screams of pained circuits. "The pinhole's messed up my block-transfer equations! Normal space doesn't know if the TARDIS is the size of a call box or bigger than the freighter!"

His small hands quickly dipped over the console. "Not the first time this happened," he murmured. "Remember when we were all shrunk to the size of insects on Earth? Not a good time!" Barb and Ian and Susan…oh, heavens, Susan. She did NOT like those ants!

The little Time Lord felt slightly more confident about his abilities this time around. His body was capable of doing what it needed to do, and his mind was unencumbered by the numbing poisons.

"Time for a new trick, dearie." He said under his breath. If the klaxon lights showed his face was suddenly shining white from sweat, he had good cause.

The Doctor hated to perform mental gyrations in more than 14 dimensions without advance warning—or at least, a very strong cup of coffee.

* * *

Outside the TARDIS, the Feathered Serpent was continuing her spin, but it was tighter. She was fast approaching the outer limits of Minyos' dead coronas. Radiation shields erected into high gear, and the last of the emergency alarms called against the perimeter invasion.

The TARDIS, still spinning, did more of it. Under the Doctor's calculations her spatial path sent her like a yo-yo on an infinitely long string. Faster and faster she spun, until thermal waves caught and threw off her nimbus in a cloud of solar rays and red-spectrum particles.

Years later, his Successor would use a similar trick in Venusian Akido—because he would be much bigger that time, and there was no point in treating a large body as a small one.

But in the body he wore now, he was quite small indeed, and he used it to his advantage.

He entered the gravity spin, joined in on the spin, and made it worse. He slipped inside the waves and increased speed until the TARDIS vibrated.

And at the last second before the Feathered Sun entered the Radiation Belt, he landed on that side of the ship.

At the same time he reverted the BTC's to the original dimensions it wore when it shrank to insect size.

He'd never erased those configurations.

You never did know when something might come in handy.

The Feathered Sun shot backwards out of the choking grip of Minyos' gravity, skimmed like a skipping-stone over the soft, flat surface of space, and broke through the Kirkwood Gap's outer skin and almost through the Gap entirely but she had sloughed off enough orbital pull by then, and the startled computers compensated just in (pun not intended) time.

The ship righted itself.

The ship was back on course, if a few weeks behind her original schedule.

* * *

The Doctor stared at the image from the Secondary Console Room. Feeling a little shaky, he wiped his face and knelt to pull out a new message cube. This one was even older than the model he'd used in trapping the pinhole, but it would have to do.

A few repairs to the Old Girl and he would be able to return back to the CIA in mostly one piece.

But even as he saturated the paper squares with his thoughts, he kept a very important one away:

He would not repair the TARDIS until he checked on the safety of the Feathered Sun.

Thousands of lives were at stake, and that pinhole had almost wrecked them.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three:

_From earth herbs, from herbs food, from food seed, from seed man._

_Man thus consists of the essence of food__  
__-__Taittiriya Upanishad_

It took a few minutes to take a deep breath and bring on some sort of mental equilibrium. He and the TARDIS had stopped moving—to the relief of both. They recovered in the quiet hum of the timecraft's "idling" mode, and he straightened himself up and dusted off some non-existent dust off his battered coat.

"My word _that_ was a close one." The Doctor muttered to himself. He checked over the Console, satisfied that the only casualty was that poorly-installed Fault Locator. No tears lost. Never had fit very well; surprised it lasted this long…

There were probably enough supplies in the bits and bobs between the Power Room and the Workshop that he could cobble a new one together…perhaps he should have just done that instead of let those children tweeze this new bit in?

The little Time Lord gently eased the still-smoking circuit board from beneath the TARDIS, and probably did not imagine he heard a sigh of relief. He frowned, turning the remnants over and over in his sturdy hands. The logic patterns on this newer model were not the same as what fit for the original '40's. Hmn.

"They make them more power efficient, but less adaptable, so they burn up extra power trying to adapt, and..." He sighed, sad for the future of Gallifrey if their educational standards insisted on square pegs for square minds. "Like concentrating on an athletic workout and ignoring one's scholastic achievement. Tch." He tutted, shaking his head. Goodness. He'd be better off looking up Watkins again! A sorry state of things when pre-Silicon Valley technology could keep a TARDIS going better than a Third Epoch repair shop on his own planet!

Stuffing the ruined thing in a pocket, he ambled to the Power Room to putter around until he found a reasonable Bypass Circuit in one of the drawers. It wouldn't do the job of a Fault Locator, but it would "plug the gap" so to speak, until he could finish the repairs.

From there it was a simple matter to send the TARDIS from outside the ship's hull to some place inside her depths. After that last jaunt, during which he was sure the TARDIS was convinced her pilot had been trying to create block-transfer computations, she was happy for something simple.

He was replacing the ruined screen with another model, and grumbling about how his later incarnations really needed to stop looking at flatscreens and liquid crystal technology like it was oh-so wonderful when really it was impossible to fix without a team of snow monkeys, a coal mine, and Rassilon's Dictionary of Euphemisms, when a dull GONG fluttered through the Console Room.

"Hmn?" The Doctor screwed his head down over his shoulder to look at the Console. He was standing on his comfortable old wooden chair, all the better to get to the scanner's housing. A colorful pattern of soft, flickering lights were making quite a display on the Environmental side. He frowned and pulled the tri-wing-bit screwdriver out from between his teeth. With a hop he scurried over for a closer look.

"Environment's all right," he muttered to himself. Oh, he wished Jamie and Zoe were here. They would provide a welcome distraction and caution about the unknown. And Zoe, for all her supposed limitations as a human, was rarely distracted from her eternal pursuit of numeric logistics. "How very odd." He stuffed the tri-bit in the pocket with the burnt circuitboard and paged up a few dialogs to see what was happening. "Hmn…now that's a little odd." He leaned back on his heels, thinking back in his considerable (if patchy) memory on what he knew about the class of cargo freighter such as the Third Zone's '_Sun_.

Time Lords might gripe and fuss all they wished, but their brains were wired more like humans in construction and design. In other words, they weren't as delightfully linear or logically progressive like other species such as, say, Tharils or the Trakenites (whom they secretly envied and the number of Trakenites who'd been made Time Lords in their early history proved it).

Time Lords were not naturally evolved in the way other species were naturally evolved, to be blunt about it. They were unique among species not because they were the oldest race in the Universe (if you believed that), but the only race that had evolved in the constant presence of Time. TIME had been their developmental factor, not any particular innate superiority.

And didn't they hate that.

They had to train themselves to catalog information along the nice, neat commands of a dictionary or encyclopedia because their minds preferred to file everything in a multidimensional cataloging system.

He'd dawdled long enough. Time enough to do something…

Turning the incoming data over in his head almost absently, he shrugged out of his battered frock coat and hung it on the coat-tree next to the clock.

The Doctor's coats were "rather heavy" as Victoria delicately stated it once. There was good reason. He had all sorts of things in them. A bit of a magpie, the Doctor was also (alas for tailors) a bit of a dowser. He picked up things that struck his fancy, and more often than not, those things were useful later. Part intuition and part of his temporal sense, the Doctor could have anything in those depths.

Rather than enjoy those newfangled fads of transdimensional pockets and clothes that were bigger on the inside (the favorite of vain Time Lords concerned with how they fit in their robes), the Doctor merely had many more pockets than anyone else. He had the inspiration from not Gallifrey, but from his initial fascination with stage illusionists on Earth; all the way back in his heady youth with Susan.

It should come as no surprise that his seemingly poor and valueless frock coat for the shabby-genteel had been designed and made by a professional stage Illusionist, an _ingenier_ of great craft.

The Doctor had pockets inside pockets; pockets where they had no place to be.

There were some things he never went without within those pockets. Smelling salts. A hand mirror, a spare handkerchief, his precious recorder…and of course, his 500-year diary.

"The question would be," he said absently, "Why would there be partial atmosphere on some decks, but livable atmosphere on others…" He shook his head irritably, and was suddenly, irrationally, and totally disgusted with himself at the pang of loneliness twisting his hearts into two little knots.

That was one thing you didn't learn in school—heavens, you didn't even learn it from your parents! Two hearts could certainly hurt twice as much as one! No one had even tried to prepare him for that experience, but it did give him some useful insight on the infamous "detached" personality of Newblood Time Lords. They might very well pull away to spare themselves the confusion of emotions.

The Doctor was approaching the end-pages of his 500-year diary, and he was frankly glad that his House was infamous for what the unkind element called "Post-Regenerative Selective Memory." Unlike those hidebound and boring old things, he had trusted his Original Self to whittle down his memory to the bare bones when he became this current Doctor in this particular body. Yes, it meant things could be at times frustrating, but the Diary helped nudge his ability to problem-solve…and anyway, it was much easier to sort things out when one's memory was no longer so horribly, horribly accurate.

Memory wasn't always the greatest ruler anyway. The older he got, the more he realized his recollections of events were faulty and from outside sources. That could only mean other Time Lords.

Time Lords relied on their memories too much anyway, he thought spitefully (his hands committing overly enthusiastic violence against his work on re-scanning the ship). Over and over, doing the same things, over and over again, consulting their memories only to make certain they always made the same decisions! "What nonsense!"

Oh. He'd just said that aloud.

For a moment he stood wrestling with himself, and himself won. He went to the old chair and sat in it, hands hanging loosely in his lap.

He didn't like being alone. He was used to solitude as a Time Lord—they were such remote species after all. But this…this was painful. He'd fled with Susan, and they'd seen so many wonders together, and then she left but she wasn't alone. And he still had travelling companions.

This was the first time in his life he'd spent any length of time without companionship.

He hated this.

_Just a little longer_, he reminded himself. _They promised you could have them back. All you have to do is do what they say…_

It made him feel dirty inside, and he was certain Jamie and Zoe wouldn't approve of his doing anything that made him feel compromised, but it wasn't just his need to have them back.

It was the fact that something deep inside him was warning him that…that _something_ was going on. That after all their years together, it was wrong of him not to follow-up on the futures of the two humans who had known—and loved—him best.

The Time Lords didn't understand. They were remote enough with themselves! But the Doctor had learned some very hard lessons about wisdom and experience traveling with humans…and he didn't want to un-learn them.

From his glimpses into the future, he still had companions. _And_ with the permission of the Time Lords! But that luxury was denied him. To keep him away from his close friends in this life was a condition of punishment far beyond his acceptance! No, he had to keep trying! If not for his own sake, then Jamie and Zoe's! Jamie in his own timeline could avoid trouble no more than a fly could avoid a spider. And Zoe was little more than a commodity to her own people with her high intellect and still-growing emotions. No, he owed it to them. He had to get them back, come what may.

With that in mind, the little Time Lord left his chair and went back to the Console. He was tired and wanted to sleep, but his conscience wouldn't let him rest. He had to see about those poor people aboard the _'Sun—_

A low-frequency MMMMMMMMMMMMM shot through the TARDIS, stretching the psychoacousticals to the final limit. The Doctor jerked away from the Console, clapping his hands hastily over his ears. Before he could finish drawing breath the sound was fading away.

"That didn't sound good," he muttered, and the pun wasn't intended—or all that clever. The last time he'd heard that…it had been just before the attack by the Fiction Master.

That between-dimension was far, far from them now, so he needn't fear that. But…just as he grew and learned about himself, so did he learn about his TARDIS. The poor girl had many different ways of expressing herself; it looked like he had just learned a new one.

Part II:

Locus

Deep inside the _Feathered Sun_, two harried technicians were trying to do their jobs without getting distracted. The fact that their demise was more likely an outcome than the accumulation of their work was a fine distraction.

Phix was a tall, pale-skinned member of the Ance Rim, an artificial gravity chain around his star system's most important world. More used to lighter gravity, his people's cartilinigous skeleton put him at average strength of a Tellurian but not as strong. He compensated with flexibility.

His companion Tokish was a Perelecca from a rival chain. Even their appearances suggested they would be at odds: The Pereleccan was shorter, heavier, with gleaming brown skin marked with glowing white tattoos (whilst Phix was one of those people that bruised from a hard look). His mind was as weighty as his body.

Phix was currently using his better height to their advantage. He played his laser-scanner through the empty corridors, seeing flaws in the programming as Tokish lugged the "portable" data collator. It weighed as much as a fully-grown Kroton.

"This will be the last section." Phix blew out his cheeks in thankfulness. "Not too soon, eh? We'll be over and done with it, and a nice warm cup of your spicetea at the end of the day!"

"Sometimes I wonder if you aren't really a Perelaccan, my friend. You like my tea as though you were born inside the orchard-walls."

"I may have been born outside them, but I know a good cup when I taste it!" Phix thumped the darker man in the chest. "Really, you should talk to your Elders. The rest of the Galaxy is just waiting for that wonder on the tables."

"Phix, we talked a—"

"What's that!"

Phix froze, his fingers clutching at his tools. Tokish held his breath, aware that the sound of his lungs would distract the finer ears of his partner.

"Something just…showed up on the scans, and then it…went all gone." The taller alien gulped hard.

Tokish echoed the movement, as he remembered as well as Phix this same thing happened before…

"I don't know about this," Phix was muttering. "First we're all fine, then we're all dying, now we're all fine again…it's too soon to celebrate, I tell you. We'll be back to all dying before you know it."

"Sooner or later, I guarantee it." Tokish answered with long-standing patience. "But in the meantime, dead or alive, our families aren't getting our terms' wages if we don't clock out on time. So. Keep scanning."

"You just won't let me enjoy a good whinge."

"If I did, I wouldn't enjoy being able to stop you."

Phix' mouth opened for a new round of their old fuss, but the red laser beam wobbled. The technicians tensed. A new sound slid into their eardrums: A wheezing, grinding, off-kilter sort of noise that shouldn't have made any rhyme or reason to it, and yet it did. The laser briefly winked out, and then resumed brighter than ever.

But upon an object that had not been there before.

The technicians stared at the unfamiliar shape standing between themselves and their assigned goal.

"How did that T-mat here without a mat?" Phix wondered.

Tokish knew better. "Either there's a T-mat hiding under the floor-panels, or it got here through some other means."

"Captain will NOT like this…"

The strange box opened up, and something even stranger stepped out.

"Oh. Hello." The little man paused, his bright blue eyes falling on the gun-like laser scanner with initial suspicion. "Hello, how do you do. I say, your ship was in a bit of a bother just now, and I thought I might stop by and see if you needed any help."

Again the two crewmen looked at each other.

"We can't answer that." Tokish said truthfully. "Such questions would be properly addressed to Captain."

"Oh? Excellent!" The strange little fellow beamed, rubbing his hands together briskly (only five fingers, the poor thing). "Well by all means, if you would be so kind as to take me to your Captain?"

"That will be simple enough, er, what do you prefer to be called?"

That brought the little alien up short. By then Tokish and Phix had decided he was not one of those legendary Tellurians, but a similarly-designed species. He was also more peculiar than even the wildest nursery-tales of Tellurians.

"D'you know," their arrival said thoughtfully, "You may be the first non-Earthers to ask me that question." He tipped his head to one side, his dark hair ruffling from the motion. "But to answer your question, I'm the Doctor."

"Very good, sir." Phix said to that. Without another word he dropped his laser-director on top of Tokish' already heavy burden, and went to the opposite wall from the TARDIS to punch in a bewildering chain of code.

"Oh, let me help you with that, my dear fellow!" The Doctor exclaimed, and made as if to lighten the other's burden.

"No, no, I am all right." Tokish was quick to assure him.

"You're a Pereleccan, aren't you?" The dimunitive fellow (he came up to Tokish' collarbone) chirped cheerfully, but Tokish knew logically that anyone who had gotten through the deadly mine field of fast-moving orbital bodies to get into the Kirkwood Gap (how else would he get there) was not to be under-estimated.

"The last time I looked, yes." He said evenly.

The other's face melted like warm document-wax into an expression anyone would identify as contrition. "Oh, I wasn't being unkind! Do forgive me." And quick as a blink, he was tilting his head to Phix, still coding into the wall. "Is all of that really necessary for me to meet your Captain?"

"I'm afraid without the codes Captain can't be seen by anyone, least of all someone as unexpected as you." Tokish apologized.

"Oh. I s—"

GONG.

Phix quickly pulled away from the wall, and made haste to resume his old position. "There we are," he said just in time, and a hologram burst from the wall in a gleaming green light.

The Doctor had seen many holograms in his life, and many examples of artificial intelligence. This "Captain" was a bit different from his usual experience. To begin with, most programs had an idealistic representation that showed its creators in the most…well…enthusiastic and positive way.

The Captain was humanoid, biped, and overweight, dressed in black from top to toe and his hair was far past the length considered mannerly amongst the majority of Third Zoners.

_How odd_, the little Time Lord thought, his gaze sharpening in interest. _He looks an awful lot like—_

**THIS IS THE CAPTAIN. WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM?**

The Doctor and the crewmen cringed.

OH. SORRY ABOUT THAT. The awful volume diminished, but the Doctor's ears would be ringing a while yet. I WAS TALKING TO THE ENGINEER. HE'S ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CIRCUIT.

"Captain," Pix cleared his throat. "We have a visitor who wishes to speak with you."

Holographic eyes sank onto the Doctor. SO I SEE. AT LEAST I DON'T SEE YOU IN MY CREWS' ROSTERS, OR CARGO MANIFOLDS. WELL? IT WAS YOUR CRAFT THAT SAVED ME. IS IT THANKS YOU WANT? THE _FEATHERED SUN_ IS AUTHORIZED TO GIVE FULL PAYLOAD VALUE ON—

"No! No! Not at all!" The Doctor waved his hands wildly, jumping up and down in his agitation. "Nothing like that. I was just being a concerned citizen." He took a deep breath. "I was tracking that ugly little pinhole that caused your problems in the first place, and I was wondering if I might be able to view your records of its impact?" He asked this most earnestly, his eyes wide and a guileless blue, hands clasped together meekly before his shirt-front.

IF YOU'RE TRACKING THAT LITTLE BLIGHT, YOU'RE WELCOME TO OUR DATA. IT WOULD HAVE KILLED US ALL SAVE FOR YOUR KIND INTERFERENCE. Captain said sternly. BUT PRIORITIES ARE PRIORITIES AND I HAVE TO SETTLE THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE CYCLE. YOU CAN SEE THE RECORDS WHEN THE MEMORY-ALLEY IS CLEARED. PHIX WILL SEE YOU TO SOME COMFORTABLE QUARTERS WHILE YOU WAIT. I STILL HAVE TO ALERT MY CLIENTS FOR THE STATUS ON THEIR ORDERS. THEY WON'T BE PLEASED AT ANY DELAY!

"Wait? Wait! I—"

The Doctor was speaking to vaporized internal atmosphere. Two sad, sympathetic head-shakes from two sympathetic aliens was his reward.

"There's no arguing with Captain." Phix said soberly. "He operates completely within his logic-patterns."

"So it would seem." The little man grumbled unhappily. He gnawed on the tip of his finger in thought. "But I confess I'm confused. What did he mean by the Alley? What does it have to do with memory?"

"Oh. The Alley is a temporary place for all incoming data. The computers input everything into the Alley first, and then from there it's decided where it goes." Phix turned briefly rhapsodic in his enthusiasm for computers, unaware that the newcomer's opinion of them were only a little more polite than his friend's opinion.

"Oh. How…very remarkable." The Doctor said with what his Companions (as well as all of his personalities, past and future) would have deemed "remarkable restraint."


End file.
